Counting the votes A look at the numbers behind the election ‘in Skeena and what happens next ?, ~ A special report By JEFF NAGEL A HUGE exodus of votes away from the NDP vaulted Liberal candidate Rhoda Witherly into second place in the race for Skeena. _ The other surprise of election night was new Canadian Alliance candidate Andy Burton’s abi- lity to instantly take the same level of vote as outgoing MP Mike Scott did in 1997 under the Reform banner. Burton’s 42.7 per cent of the popular vote was actually slightly ahead of Scatt’s 42.4 per cent in the previous vote, Scott was first elected in 1993 with 38 per cent of the vote after NDP MP Jim Fulton retired. In 1997 the NDP’s Isaac Sobol finished with 9,859 votes, a 3,500 vote lead over third-place “Witherly, _ This time that grip om second spot vanished, ‘reducing the NDP with candidate Larry Guno to 6,227 vates, well behind the Liberals’ 8,656. ‘Burton took 12,704 votes — fewer than Scott’s 13,399 - due to a combination of lower voter “tumeout. this time and the departure of some vo- ters from the riding. Tumout fell from 66 per cent in 1997 to 61 per cent last week. It was lowest in Prince Rupert, where barely 50 per cent came to the polls. Terrace votes Alliance Terrace and Thornhill remained an impregn- ~ able Alliance stronghold. ‘Residents here voted for Burton by a more - than 2-1 margin over the second place Liberal here to give the Alliance candidate 53.6 per cent of the vote here. Nearly a third of Burton’s total vote came from Terrace and area. The NDP vote in Terrace and area shrank from 22 per cent in 1997 to 14 per cent. The Liberals Witherly picked up most of those votes, rising from 18 per cent last time to nearly 27 per cent, or 1,996 votes. The Alliance didn’t win every Terrace poll, however. Kitsumkalum village voted heavily for Guno. And southside Terrace polls tended to be where Alliance support in the city was weakest. One of those polls, #114, was actually tied with 51 vates each for Burton and Witherly, while an- other saw the leaders separated by only one vote. Four other polls from neighbourhoods in the horseshoe — numbers 98, 101 103, and 105 ~ were also fairly close, while the most lopsided AlBance wins came on the bench. Voters in Thornhill were more likely to back the Alliance than their city counterparts across the river. The Canadian Alliance polled 62.7 per cent in Thomhill compared to 50.6 per cent in Terrace. The combined Liberal-NDP vote was about 44 per cent in Terrace, compared to 32 per cent in Thornhill. Around the riding Even bigger Alliance country than Terrace was Smithers, where fully 57 per cent of the vote went to Burton. Stewart-Meziadin also voted 54 per cent for the former Stewart mayor. The Alliance got 46 per cent of the vote in Kitimat and nearly 38 per cent in the Hazeltons area. Those numbers fell off towards the coast. Nispa’a candidate Guno cleaned up in ithe Burton Witherly Guno Giowinskl Benham Jaseph Brown -Area/Poll (CA) (Lb), (NDP) = (PC) (Green) — (CHP) (NLP) Queen Charlottes == 05 651 300 70 +74... 7.32 Prince Rupert & Area 1,454 2, 204°4,284 0 119) 126 0 ‘Coastal villages | Bd “ae 8 BB Terrace & area 4,027, 1,886 1,069 199 — 139 49 24 Kitimat & Area. 1,842 1,199 682 140 =i OR ‘Simithers & Area 2764 982 §96 £182 ° #£«+153 +180. i6 ‘Nass Valley 0 a BB 5. BL ‘Hazaltons-Kispiox area 528 314448 48 35 2 4 -‘Kitwanga-Gitsequecia area 145. 162-252 (18 rae 22 2 ‘Stewart-Meziadin = = KO CE 24 | 2... 2 3 Dease Lake-Atlin area 198 94-263 _ 44, 14 3. =~«6 Advance/mobilée polis 984 638 500 86 34 26 11 Totals 12,704 8,656 6,227 957 680 363 «136 onto his seat Hallsor. minister David Anderson. even gave Hallsor a lead over Anderson. But on election night, Anderson took | the riding handily, ga- ; thering 23,688 votes im or 42.6 per cent of the § vote compared to fim Hallsor’s 16,516 or § 29.7 per cent of the vote. =. Hallsor says those fie opinion polls may have contributed to his loss because they might have encour- aged people to vote § for Anderson just to Anderson holds FOR AWHILE there it looked promising for Bruce Born and raised in Terrace, Hallsor, now a Vic- toria lawyer and a Canadian Alliance candidate in the Nov. 27 federal election, was running a tight second to incumbent Liberal MP and cabinet At least that’s what the opinions polls said, One standing in Parliament. profile. MP. eaucratic world he’ll find himself in. DON'T EXPECT to see Andy Burton on the TV news, driving home some point while Compared to past Skeena MPs such as NDPer Jim Fulton, who could generate news- clips with just the force of his personality or Mike Scott, who lead the Reform/Alliance charge against the Nisga’a trealy, Burton doubts if he’l! have that kind of very visible “You know me. I’m a grassroots kind of guy,” said Burton the morning after his Nov. 27 win in Skeena as the Canadian Alliance “HL be concentrating on constituency work,” added Burton who noted that some good-old fashioned stubborness might be re- quired in order to circumnavigate the new bur- The constituency work has already started. The morning after the vote, Burton took his first call from a constituent who had a passport Witherly, Guno hope Burton can be partner OUTGOING CANADIAN Alliance MP Mike Scott greets successor Andy Burton, who had no trouble in retaining the Skeena seat for the party. Burton is the ax-mayor of Stewart. Nass Vailey, where the NDP took &2 per cent of the vote. He also won the Kitwanga-Gitseguecla area, the coastal villages like Bella Bella, Hartley Bay and Port Simpson, and was close behind Burton in the Hazeltons-Kispiox area. Witherly delivered the Liberal vote in her home town of Prince Rupert. She got 43 per cent there, compared lo 28 per cent for the Alliance and 24 per cent for the NDP. The Liberals also won by similar margins on the Queen Charlottes — where Haida and Liberal nomination runner-up Cliff Fregin campaigned for Witherly. - The Bulkley Valley was the only warm spot for the Christian Herilage Party’s George Joseph, who polled three times as many votes in Smi- thers, Telkwa and Moricetown than any other area. It still added up to only about 3.7 per cent — half what the party gol in the Smithers area in past elections — and only about 1.2 per cent across the riding. Early tallies wrong Just as in the U.S. presidential clection, the early numbers in Skeena were not to be relied upon. Initial figures showed Guno in the lead, ahead of Witherly, prompting national TV broadcasters to suggest his “healthy lead” indicated he'd be the likely winner. Riding results printed in Tuesday’ s National Post showed the Liberals ahead in Skeena with ‘163 votes to 162 for the NDP’s Guno, with nine out of 175 polls reporting, As in most years, however, the smaller native villages were the first to complete their counts and report, and those went heavily in favour of NDP and the Liberals. The vote count swung heavily towards the Al- liance later in the evening as results from Ter- race, Kitimat and Smithers came in. Around the province Burton will go to Oltawa with a large conatin- gent of other Alliance candidates from’ B.C., many re-elected and with substantial experience. Among them will be Prince George area MPs |Vote In Terrace city limits | Vote in Thornhill BEB Buren (cay EA witrerty cuit) ET auno ory TD chowinen (PC) Hi pennam (Green) FB} Joseph (CHP) Cl row pup) Dick Harris and Jay Hill, and Cariboo MP Philip Mayfield. Changes in B.C. saw Nelson Riis, the NDP MP for Kamloops, defeated by an Alliance chal- lenger. Also defeated was longtime Coquitlam Liberal MP Lou Sekora and Liberal MP Ray- mond Chan. Liberal Environment minister David Anderson was re-elected, fending off Alliance. challen er and former Terrace resident Bruce:Hallsor. ’ ‘The Alliance’s 66 seats were an improvement from the 58 it won under the Reform Party ban- ner in 1997. The NDP were held to 13 seats nationally, while Joe Clark kept the Progressive Conserva- tives alive with 12 seats — barely enough to re- tain official party status. _ The Alliance victory here was tempered by dismay that a much-hoped-for breakthrough in Ontario didn’t happen. “I’m disappointed we didn’t do better,” Burton said. ‘We needed to make some breakthroughs ia Ontario. That didn’t happen.” Expect new MP to be low-key problem. Those who may wish to keep a close eye on Burton will find him leaning more to the conservative side of the Alliance when it comes to fiscal issues and a dit more of a moderate when il comes to social issues. Burton downplayed his perso- nal opinions on some social is- sues during the campaign, prefer- ring instead to concentrate on economic issues or more popular ones such as pun control. But now he’s loosened up. Abortion, Burton says, is a pri- vate matter. “It’s not up to the govern- ment,” he says. Andy Burton Burton had expected to be in Ottawa last week for an indocrtination session and to be- come acquainted with his fellow Alliance ] MPs. | That was cancelled and Burton is now due to be in the nation’s ca- pita! Dec. 11. 1 The extra time will give Burton a chance to put together a consti- -| tuency office location and staff and to settle into a condominium he and wife Ann bought two | weeks ago. ‘| It isn’t known if any of Mike Scoit’s people will be working with Burton. He is thinking of ways to not #6] only have a main office in Ter- #4 race, but to also have smaller Jones in Prince Rupert and Smi- thers. Burton does say he wants to spend as much time in the riding as possible. “I’m not going to get Ottawashed,” he said in a play on the word brainwashed. He admits he’s disappointed stop him from being elected. “It looked as if the NDP and Green vote went to Anderson,” he said. Hallsor did say he was happy with the cam- paign in that he ran on issues as opposed to perso- nalities. He’s putting any future political work on hold for the time being. Hallsor not only took time off to run, but he spent the better part of the spring acting as the B.C, campaign manager for Tom Long, defeated by ‘Stockwell Day for the Canadian Alliance lea- dership. It now means he has to pay attention to his in- come, "My billable hours in the firm have dropped off this year,” Hallsor noted. He is Interested in next year’ s provincial elec- tion, but will most likely be a keen observer as opposed to an active participant. Bruce Hallsor ANDY BURTON and Liberal op- ponent Rhoda Witherly may not have seen the last of cach other. Witherly is the chair of the Prince Rupert Port Authority and it has several ambitious plans which have every possibility of spilling economic benefits out be- yond the coastal city. One of those is to continue de- veloping the waterfront to make it attractive for land-based tourists and for ones arriving or departing via small, pocket cruise ships. And there’s a far-reaching plan to build a dock large enough for the huge cruise ships. As well, the authority conti- nues to work on increasing its in- dustrial shipping capacity. All these issues will inevitably mean contact between Witherly and Burton as the authorily, a creation of the federal govern- ment, seeks federal assistance. Witherly anticipates Burton will be sympathetic to the plans. He is, after all, the former mayor of Stewart which has its own port facility and as a munici- pal politician, knows fuil well the impact that infrastructure can have on local economies. Witherly chuckles’ at the men- tal image of herself and Burton striding together through the corri- dors of Parliament Hill to promote northwest issues. But she wonders what impact Burton can have in a party and caucus unsympathetic to broad taxpayer support for projects. “The question is, will he be able to do anything given the Al- liance platform on these kinds of issues,” said Witherly. “Few people can get things done by the sheer dint of their personality.” Witherly thinks one of Buriqn’s strengths may lic in his being part of a strong Western caucus within the group of Alliance MPs elected to parliament. “There are a num- ber of issues they can look at.” Such a strong group just may be able to push forward regional issues, Witherly concludes. ig HE FAILED to win Skeena for the NDP, but Larry Guno says -he wouldn’t have missed the exper- ience for the world. , “It was a big eye-opener for me,” Guno said last week, refer- ting to the level of unemployment and poverty he saw. With the election over, he now plans to help out in any way he can, “I’m determined to continue, not: necessarily .as.a candidate, -— but. lo’ continue to fight to: raise the public’s awareness about the tremendous poverty in the riding.” with the results, but added voter turnout was low overall. Guno said results show he had overwhelming native support. But he scoffs at a CBC TV story that said the clection in Skeena was a “race about race”, because Guno is Nisga’a. “I just think it was a bit of a sensationalization,” Guno said. “It clouded the real issue, which was representation.” That’s a message he hopes the Alliance’s Andy Burton will heed. “IT hope Mr. Burtonys i that unifying this ridi¢fg* sential,” he said. “I hope that he'd be more inclusive and start visit- . ing the First Nations, which his predecessor didn’t do.” Guno’s immediate plans in- clude helping to rebuild the NDP. “[ think Canada needs that voice,” he said.